Thursday, May 17, 2007

Chatbots; virtual surgery

Two things from BoingBoing that amused me this week, for completely different reasons -

- I Chat, Therefore I Am... - Discover Magazine has transcripts of two chatbots (ALICE and Jabberwacky) talking to each other. An excerpt:

J: How do you define life?

A: Life is the opposite of death.

J: So death is the absence of life?

A: Take it easy. I try not to think about such things.

J: Why not?

A: Ambiguous.

J: Yes!

- Perform virtual surgery on a stuffed bunny in 60 seconds or less - a little weird I guess but fun. You have to prepare the bunny for surgery, make the incision, complete a couple of intraoperative tasks. I must admit that it's a good thing I'm not a surgeon - the first time I killed the bunny when the phone rang; he didn't even come close to surviving until the 2nd go-round.